


Opossum Supremacy

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Crack, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, dadneto, possum!Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27635129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: Charles is a harried headmaster of a school for mutants who just wants to have a relaxing Sunday morning. Erik is the opossum which has moved into his closet - his brood of five baby possums included.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 38





	Opossum Supremacy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/gifts), [DoctorMagenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMagenta/gifts).
  * Inspired by [This Is My Trash Can Now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616904) by [DoctorMagenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMagenta/pseuds/DoctorMagenta). 



> I can't believe I really wrote this. I blame Jasp and Nio, your honour! 
> 
> Inspired by this adorable [The Dodo vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJNCjjQkK9o).

There was an opossum in Charles’ closet.

It was a nice Sunday morning – one with sunlight and a blue sky, one Charles could have spent outside on the veranda reading a book and drinking tea and eating the biscuits Raven and Irene had brought over. When he had woken up at nine am, he had been totally prepared for this Sunday to be like every other Sunday, and he had taken great delight in this.

Then, something had rustled in his closet, and all his plans had vanished into thin air.

He sighed and gripped the handle of the broom tighter before he wheeled forward cautiously. The opossum had the sweetest little snout and the cutest beady eyes, but also the nastiest-looking teeth. If Charles could keep it from eating his face off, he would be more than happy.

“Why, hello there,” was the first thing he had said to the opossum when he had flipped on the light switch in his walk-in closet and seen a teeny-tiny head poke forth from a pile of his dirty clothes. “Aren’t you a dear?”

The opossum – unsurprisingly – had said nothing. Sniffing, it had turned its head with its black, shining eyes this and that way and sat still.

Charles had chuckled. It was not uncommon that pedestrian wildlife found its way into his room – he lived on the ground floor for better accessibility and had the deplorable habit of forgetting to fully close his floor-to-ceiling windows every now and then. Really, he’d had worse (he had thought as he remembered that one time Raven had to come over and safe him from a common garter snake which was trying to set up permanent camp below his writing desk).

However, the situation had escalated when Charles had tried to fish his favourite navy cardigan from the opossum-occupied pile of dirty clothes.

“Now, I’m very sorry, but I do believe this is mine.”

He had barely reached out when the opossum had opened its mouth, displaying an impressive avalanche of needle-sharp teeth, and had released the most angry and bloodcurdling sound Charles had ever encountered.

“KcchhhchhhHHHH!”

“ _Jesus_ -” Charles had promptly shrunk back and pulled his fingers from the danger zone. His heart was going berserk in his chest. “Alright, fine, it’s your cardigan now.”

And maybe it had just been his imagination, but upon his retreat from the closet, he had thought the opossum had looked just a tad bit too satisfied.

Now, he had returned, and he was hell-bent on reclaiming his dirty laundry (as pathetic as that sounded). Armed with thick gardening gloves, a metal bucket – lid thankfully included – which he had dug up from the kitchen and a broom he had found in the dusty corner of a classroom, he wheeled up to his closet door. He could have asked one of his teachers or a student to help him, but this was a battle he had to fight alone.

Apparently, the opossum had sensed his hostile intent from far away already – as soon as he pulled the closet door open, it fixed him with its obsidian stare and hissed menacingly.

He raised his hands in surrender. “I know, I know. Neither of us wants to be here. But I’m just trying to help, I swear!”

The opossum eyed him warily. Then, it turned and vanished into the folds of Charles’ favourite cardigan.

Charles acted fast. Quietly, he manoeuvred himself as close to the pile of dirty laundry as he dared, before he laid the bucket on its side on the ground, opened the lid and carefully hooked one side of the broom’s head under his navy cardigan to lift it.

He stared. Six pairs of opossum eyes stared back.

“You have _babies_?” he exclaimed at last, and the opossum hissed in retaliation, five miniature copies of itself clinging to its fur.

Except they weren’t quite the same. There was an albino one, with hair as white as freshly fallen snow, and beside it cowered another joey which looked like it had been dipped into ginger paint. And at the tail end of the mother animal, a remarkably green ball of fur was just cracking its jaw open in a heart-wrenching yawn.

“You have babies,” Charles said again, dumbstruck with cuteness overload, and now the bigger opossum was looking at him with something akin to pity in its eyes.

Charles nodded. “Yes, sorry, I know that right now this is beside the point. But how would you feel about kindly getting into this bucked with your brood so I can take you outside?” And he gently poked the broom at the opossum’s backside.

Once again, the marsupial bared its teeth and spat a heartfelt hiss, and this time, Charles could even detect a crystal-clear spike of anger from the to his telepathy usually so muddled animal mind. Still, her persisted, inch by inch nudging the opossum towards the metal bin, until its snout was almost through the opening-

The opossum’s mind flared brightly, and the bucket crumpled into a very flat, very un-bucket-y piece of metal.

Erik was livid. How dared this insolent human poke him with this curious tickly stick? How dare he threaten the Master of Magnetism and his brood? How _dare_ he?

“Cower before me, human!” he roared, and Nina and Pietro whimpered on his back, “Opossums and humans cannot live together in peace! Recognise that you are facing your superiors!”

“I don’t think he can understand you, Papa,” Lorna chimed in, gripping his fur somewhere at the base of his tail, but Erik knew better. Surely the shocked expression on the human’s face had to be attributed to his awe-inspiring display of power – Erik had crushed the metal prison with but a blink of his eyes, and now the enemy of opossum-kind was utterly at his mercy.

“Do you give up yet?” he hissed at the strange metal contraption which carried the human’s weight, which was the only barrier standing between his family and freedom. “Do you yield?”

The human continued staring dumbly. Then, his face split into a ghastly grimace of joy.

“A mutant opossum,” he yowled and leaned down, mindless of Erik’s threateningly bristling fur. “You’re extraordinary, do you know that?”

“I do,” Erik grumbled, mind thick with the dissatisfaction of having no fearsome effect whatsoever. “Now remove yourself from my path or be removed!”

Again, the human did not react to his command. Anya chirped in distress. “He’s reaching out!”

“Halt, you wretched human scum!” Erik’s nostrils quivered. “Can you not see that opossums have been selected as _the_ dominant species on the planet!”

But all of Erik’s protests came too late. Ere he knew what was happening, the human had bent over and was dangling Wanda and Pietro by their little paws, and then Erik’s children disappeared in the giant’s hand, squealing in agony.

“No! You will pay!” Erik howled, in vain trying to stall the human’s metal contraption as it rolled away and took with it his babies. Their cries echoed in the enormous cave, and then, there was silence.

Nina was sobbing. Lorna’s claws dug almost painfully into Erik’s back, and Anya was petrified with what they had just witnessed. His opossum heart bleeding from the loss of his children, Erik retreated into the warm softness of his earlier hiding place – a place where he thought they would be safe.

He had been wrong. The humans would always come for them, for those which were different, which they called vermin and plague. And there was nothing Erik could do about it.

Heartbeats passed, or maybe a small eternity. The human did not return.

“Waiting will not do us any good,” he finally told his remaining three babies still clinging to his back. “We will trek through the Unknown to where we have come from, and if the fates are in our favour, we will prevail.”

“Yes, father,” whispered Lorna. “We shall be brave.”

And so, Erik started into the unknown – he had traversed it last night already, but in broad daylight, the looming shapes which had scared his babies seemed to tower twice as high and glare thrice as menacingly. The human had to yet to be seen, however, and there came a fresh gust of air from an opening not too far across the strangely slippery surface of the floor.

With great courage, Erik at last crested the barrier at the entrance of the cave and stepped out onto the grass. From the sighs on his back, he learned just how relieved his children to have been carried to escape safely, and he, too, felt a great weight vanish off his heart.

Later, they would mourn for Wanda and Pietro. Now, they were alive.

Erik sniffed the air before he set off into the direction of the bushes behind which he had discovered a trash can a few days ago. It was always well filled and lifting the latch which kept its lid down proved to be a child’s play with the tremendous powers Erik had at hand. Truly, there was no species more powerful than that of the opossums.

“Uh, father,” Nina started on his back, “I think the human is watching us.”

Erik spun round. And really – there it was, the wretched monster which had stolen his children, sat on his strange metal contraption as it said, “Hey there, darlings. Don’t worry, I put your babies in the hamper over there. Do you want to get them?”

Erik’s hiss guttered out. Was this a trap? It had to be a trap. No human would be so kind as to give back that which he had robbed – life had taught Erik this truth long ago.

Still. A shimmer of hope crossed his mind, flickered like a glow worm in the dark of a moonless night.

He turned his head to his remaining brood. “Hold on tight.” Then, he set off towards where the human had produced a strange cage which looked like it was made from tangled, dried vines.

“Here you go,” said the human at last and carefully upended the strange prison.

Erik could have shrieked in relief – there, Wanda and Pietro lay, shivering and whimpering in fear, but unharmed. Swift like the wind, he was by their side and letting them clamber back into his fur.

“Aww, you’re just too cute to be true,” cooed the flesh bag, and Erik gave a half-hearted hiss in return. With every stroke of his babies’ paws through his fur, he felt his anger melt away and his power return.

“If you threaten us _one_ _more_ _time_ , human,” he growled, “my revenge shall be terrible.”

Ignoring his every word as though he was really unable to understand him, the human smiled. “You know, if you ever need a warm place to stay and some food, just come around. My window’s almost always open, anyway.”

Erik wrinkled his nose in disdain and turned away. Of course, he would never accept that offer.

Never.

“No, Raven, I swear he’s a mutant opossum!”

Raven pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled. “Charles. You’re telling me that one, the opossum which comes to your window every day with its _babies_ in tow is a _he_ , and second, you’re telling me it can move metal.”

Her brother looked up at her, then back down at the small family of opossums busily demolishing a whole bowl of cat food. His eyes were twinkling with an uncanny enthusiasm. “No, really. You should have seen the window frame the other day – Jean had to come around and bend it back in shape so I could close it again, and just because I was five minutes late on their usual feeding time. In fact, the green one, you see, is already starting to display remarkable control, and you won’t believe how fast the white one can move…”

Raven rolled her eyes and settled in on her brother’s couch for one of his longer lectures. This new pet fad of him had lasted unusually long already – several weeks, going from the fattened-up state of the opossum and its joeys – and she didn’t think she’d ever hear the end of it.

“Quite extraordinary, isn’t it?” Charles had turned back to her, delight rolling off him in waves.

“Yeah, sure.” She nodded with a wry smile and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Next thing you know, they’re founding a Brotherhood and trying to establish Opossum Supremacy.”

Charles sighed happily. And as Raven glanced down at the presumably mutant opossum and its babies, she thought it was looking back just a wee bit too approvingly.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This Is My Human Now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27642008) by [DoctorMagenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMagenta/pseuds/DoctorMagenta)




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